Many businesses provide customers with portable terminal devices that operate from a battery source and communicate wirelessly with access points operated by the businesses in their premises. The customers may use these devices, for example, to order food or other products, to view video content (movies, TV shows), to listen to audio content, to play games, and for other related purposes. This list of devices may include, but is not limited to, video gaming consoles, tablet devices, touch screen terminals, and the like. Frequently, these portable user terminals comprise one or more types of well-known electronic payment technology that enable the customer to pay for products or services. Examples of such well-known electronic payment technology include magnetic card readers (i.e., credit card swipe machine), Europay, Mastercard®, Visa® (EMV) chip card readers (i.e., smart card readers), Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) based payments (i.e., ibeacon), near field communication (NFC) transceivers that often communicate with smartphones, and the like.
As with any type of device that performs financial transactions and transmits wirelessly, information security is important. Therefore, many portable user interface terminals incorporate advanced levels of encryption to protect customer payment information. Information is not only encrypted for transmission over the wireless link, it is also encrypted close to the swipe or contact itself. Thus, credit or debit card information read from a smart card reader will often be stored in encrypted form in memory (e.g., Flash memory, disc drive).
While such portable user interface terminals provide great value to businesses due to the security of card holder data, they also represent a significant financial investment. In addition to the cost of each portable device, a business may also implement one or more wireless access points (e.g., WiFi or similar terminals) that communicate with a central server (optionally). The central server is coupled to the Internet and communicates with financial institutions (i.e., banks, credit card companies).
Due to the ever-evolving nature of hacking threats and digital financial fraud schemes, portable user interface terminals are frequently upgraded to add newly developed and more secure card readers and NFC transceivers, improved encryption, improved tamper protection, and the like. Unfortunately, this frequently means that the portable user interface terminals must be replaced or physically modified. This can be a very expensive proposition for a business that employs a large number of portable user interface terminals, such as a restaurant that provides tabletop terminals to customers or an arcade that provides game consoles to customers.
Therefore, there is a need for improved portable user interface terminals that have lower operating and replacement costs. In particular, there is a need for portable user interface terminals that may be upgraded easily and at low cost.